Early Bird Deadline

Thursday 9 May 2019

The Origami Migration

WWF-UK

World Heritage sites are some of the world’s most precious places, but tragically many of them are under threat from industrial-scale activities like mining and dredging. WWF’s Saving Our Shared Heritage campaign aims to bring these threats to people’s attention, securing greater protection for these incredible places and the local communities that rely upon them.

From September the focus of the campaign was a World Heritage site in Spain – Doñana National Park. There were plans to dredge the river surrounding the park with potentially devastating consequences, threatening the wetlands that are home to six million migratory birds each year.

WWF needed a way to make a distant and rather ‘niche’ issue tangible to our supporters, so we decided to tap into people’s love of UK birds. Around a million of the migratory birds that shelter in Doñana each winter also visit our UK shores. We asked people to fold a migratory bird of their own and send them to us, showing their support for Doñana. The response was far greater than we expected! The thousands of birds that we received were used by our Spanish colleagues to create a beautiful installation in the streets of Madrid.